The present invention relates to data processing by digital computer, and more particularly to automatic data acquisition and aggregation.
Systems exist for integrating data acquisition devices such as RFID tag readers with enterprise software applications that make use of the collected data. The functionality of such integration systems, however, is typically limited to passing the collected data between the data acquisition devices and the enterprise software applications. In some cases, the integration systems can batch up the collected data or filter the collected data before passing it along. However, the integration systems typically do not perform any further processing on the data.
In addition, the integration systems are typically designed to handle data acquisition devices that do not emit data continuously. For example, RFID tag readers typically only emit data when the readers detect the presence of a tagged item. The integration systems are not designed to handle data acquisition devices that emit data continuously. For example, temperature sensors generally emit a continuous stream of temperature values, perhaps one every few milliseconds. The enterprise applications, however, may not be interested in the individual temperature values and may only be interested in higher-level events like the sudden rise of temperature in a refrigeration unit. The existing integration systems, however, are not designed to process a continuous stream of sensor data values or to identify high-level events based on the sensor data.